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Time sink #3

Opinion
Jan 27, 20061 min
Data Center

Today’s first bottomless pit that will suck your life away is a simple looking problem that starts out easy and quickly gets aggravatingly difficult …

The problem is called Planarity and requires you to rearrange a set of nodes so that the lines interconnecting them do not across each other. Written in Flash (whcih provides for much smoother operation than Java-based puzzles), Planarity is annoyingly addictive. The problems start at level 1 with six nodes and then go to level 2 with 8, level 3 with 16, and so on. All levels can be solved if you have enough time and the only reward is your score. Prepare for extended unproductiveness. [Thanks to fellow IrReGuLaR Anton Sherwood for spotting this one.]

mark_gibbs

Mark Gibbs is an author, journalist, and man of mystery. His writing for Network World is widely considered to be vastly underpaid. For more than 30 years, Gibbs has consulted, lectured, and authored numerous articles and books about networking, information technology, and the social and political issues surrounding them. His complete bio can be found at http://gibbs.com/mgbio

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